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Livonia-based Roush is expected to retrofit an unknown existing model at its Allen Park prototyping facility.

Roush and Google declined to comment on the topic.

While specific suppliers were not confirmed, the project is expected to include the “top players” in automotive safety and technology in the region, a source said.

Google made the announcement Tuesday that it plans to launch its own fleet of driverless vehicles, with no steering wheel, gas or brake pedals, to establish the software company as a player in automotive.

Continental Automotive Systems in Auburn Hills and Denso International America Corp. declined to comment. Both work on autonomous technologies. Google designed the car and plans indicate the cars will be fully autonomous with extra safety features, company co-founder Sergey Brin said during a conference Tuesday hosted by technology blog Re/code in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Automotive News reported.

Google could become a “serious competitive threat” to the auto industry if it continues to push its self-driving cars, said Mark Reuss, product-development chief at General Motors Co.

GM, which is developing its own autonomous vehicle technology, isn’t in a race with Google to create driverless cars, he told reporters Wednesday in Detroit.

“Anybody can do anything with enough time and money,” Reuss said. “If they set their mind to it, I have no doubt” that they could become “a very serious competitive threat.”

Google has been developing self-driving vehicle technology since 2009, using a fleet of test vehicles equipped with sensors, lasers, radar and computers that process mapping and driving software to allow their vehicles to be driven autonomously. Google says its test fleet has racked up about 700,000 miles of autonomous driving so far.

The Google prototypes are small pod-shaped cars that appear to be the size of a Smart ForTwo with two seats and two doors. The cars are powered by an electric motor and have a top-speed limited to 25 mph. The vehicles are expected to be acquired from an unidentified manufacturer and retrofitted with autonomous technology, according to a source.

The cars don’t have steering wheels, brake pedals or accelerator pedals “because they don’t need them. Our software and sensors do all the work,” according to the company’s blog post.

The prototypes, which have safety items such as additional foam at the bumper and a plastic-like windshield, are part of the company's research laboratory called Google X, which is led by Brin.

“We took a look from the ground up as to what it would be like if we had self-driving cars in the world,” Brin said. “We've worked with partners in the Detroit area, Germany and California,” he said without giving specifics. The prototypes let users ask for a destination address and then drive them to it, Brin said.

Over the next two decades, self-driving cars are going to get a bigger share of the market. Such vehicles will reach 11.8 million in 2035, according to Egil Juliussen, an analyst at IHS Automotive. And by 2050, he expects almost all cars to become self-driving. They are estimated to fetch premiums that will start at $7,000 to $10,000 in 2025, he said.